The recent elections in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry have once again exposed the weaknesses of India’s parliamentary system. They reveal how elections can be manipulated, governments formed through undemocratic means, coalitions rendered unstable, and large majorities turned authoritarian. More troublingly, these are not isolated failures but structural flaws for which parliamentarianism offers no real remedy.
In West Bengal, the BJP handed Mamata Banerjee’s TMC a crushing defeat, but the election itself was deeply controversial. Weeks before polling, India’s Election Commission—operating under the BJP-led Central government—removed nearly 12 percent of voters from the electoral rolls. Analysts have argued that these deletions exceeded the BJP’s margin of victory in 99 of the state’s 294 constituencies.
Such manipulation threatens democracy itself, for it opens the door to one-party dominance. Yet, the Election Commission defended its actions by invoking its exclusive constitutional authority under the Representation of the People Act to revise voter rolls.
The Supreme Court largely endorsed this position, ruling that courts cannot intervene once the electoral process is underway and directing aggrieved citizens to appellate tribunals instead. In practice, however, India’s slow and expensive legal system left disenfranchised voters with no meaningful remedy before the election.
Central Bias Catching Up
India’s parliamentary system provides few checks on the Election Commission. Because the ruling party at the Centre controls both the executive and the legislature, the Prime Minister can control appointments to the Commission, shape administrative rules, and legislate voter qualifications.
The Tamil Nadu elections highlighted another recurring flaw of parliamentarianism: in a hung Assembly, government formation often becomes arbitrary and undemocratic. The unelected Governor—typically appointed by the ruling party at the Centre—has broad discretion to decide whom to invite to form government, since the Constitution provides no clear procedure.
In Tamil Nadu, the Governor, a BJP loyalist, asked the leader of the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), which had won 108 of the 118 seats needed for a majority, to prove support even before being sworn in. Critics argued that the delay was intended to give the BJP time to engineer an alternative coalition.
The politicisation of Governors poses a grave danger to democracy. It enables the ruling party at the Centre to extend its influence in the states through backroom maneuvering and encourages corruption, as parties use inducements and pressure to persuade MLAs to defect. This has given rise to the now-familiar spectacle of “resort politics,” where legislators are hidden away to prevent poaching by rival camps.
Successive governments have exploited Raj Bhavans for political advantage. The Sarkaria Commission (1983), the Punchhi Commission (2007), and several Supreme Court judgments—including Bommai (1994) and Rameshwar Prasad (2006)—have all failed to curb the misuse of gubernatorial power. In 2018, the BJP’s BS Yediyurappa was invited to form the government in Karnataka despite lacking a majority, giving his party time to seek defections. In 2019, Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as Maharashtra’s Chief Minister in a secret early-morning ceremony while rival parties were still negotiating their alliance.
Coalitions formed under such circumstances expose yet another weakness of parliamentarianism: chronic instability. In Tamil Nadu, the TVK government scraped past the majority mark and now reportedly survives with the support of only 120 MLAs—just two above the required number. Its durability remains uncertain.
Here again, parliamentarianism offers no solution. The Governor’s office is indispensable to the system because authority must rest somewhere when no elected government exists. And since Governors are chosen by the Prime Minister, they are naturally inclined toward the ruling party at the Centre. Similarly, unstable coalitions are an inherent feature of parliamentary government, where the executive survives only so long as it retains legislative confidence.
'Structurally Helpless'
The Assam results reveal the opposite danger: governments with overwhelming majorities can become authoritarian. In a parliamentary system, executive and legislative powers are fused, leaving few institutional restraints on partisan excesses or abuses of power. The BJP has returned to power in Assam with a commanding majority under a Chief Minister frequently criticised for autocratic governance.
Here too, the parliamentary system is structurally helpless. Its very design concentrates executive and legislative authority in the office of the Chief Minister or Prime Minister in the name of efficiency. When that power is abused, citizens have few institutional safeguards.
Kerala offers a final reminder of another flaw of parliamentarianism: voters often do not get to choose their leader directly. After the election, people were left protesting in support of rival chief ministerial candidates, yet the ultimate decision rested not with the electorate but with the party High Command—an unelected leadership structure that determines who governs the state.
Again, the parliamentary system offers no remedy because it provides no mechanism for the direct election of chief ministers.
While the original Constitution left the choice to elected legislators, the anti-defection laws of the late 1980s stripped MLAs of independent judgment by making it illegal for them to vote against party directives.
In election after election, Indians confront the same structural flaws of parliamentarianism: electoral manipulation, politicised Governors, unstable coalitions, authoritarian governments, and leaders imposed by party bosses.
It is time for Indians to demand a system more worthy of a great democracy.
(Bhanu Dhamija is Founder and CEO of the Divya Himachal Group and author of ‘Why India Needs the Presidential System’. He can be reached @BhanuDhamija. This is a personal blog, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)